> Users can now prove the authenticity of a photo taken on iPhone 18 Pro models with Apple Reference Image, powered by the new sensor in the Main camera that can sign every pixel it sees. When a photo is taken in the new Reference mode, the camera captures signed sensor data that Private Cloud Compute develops into an unalterable reference image.5 Reference images can be viewed in the Photos app alongside the main image, like a digital negative, to visually compare the two assets and determine if any edits were made. APIs are available in iOS, iPadOS, and macOS 27 for third-party apps to enable viewing of these reference images.
iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max (apple.com)
360 pointsby meetpateltech16 hours ago392 comments
quinncom 15 hours ago
I love that it has a feature to prove images came from the real world:
cavoirom 14 hours ago
Yes, this is really a "Pro" feature, while C2PA exists, not many consumer products have it, iPhone will be the game changer for reporters.
kllrnohj 11 hours ago
Reporters who only capture pictures on an iPhone and not a "real" camera, and who also never need to edit the photo to crop off or obscure identifying information, innocent bystanders/victims, gory violence or nudity, etc...
The problem is real, but this solution seems to not really solve it in any practical sense.
reaperducer 11 hours ago
Reporters who only capture pictures on an iPhone and not a "real" camera, and who also never need to edit the photo to crop off or obscure identifying information, innocent bystanders/victims, gory violence or nudity, etc...
So, 90% of photojournalism outside of the major cities, then.
drdrey 8 hours ago
you could do edits like crops in a way that preserves the signature using ZK proofs
cavoirom 7 hours ago
You want to do all that, then still can prove the picture is authentic. The editing history show what had been changed compare to the previous version, from the color adjustment to blur areas... it's not about preventing editing, it's about proving the authenticity when needed.
xattt 14 hours ago
*Not available in EU or China.
I wonder what the common thread is.
rock_artist 13 hours ago
> I wonder what the common thread is.
Regulation.
For China I would assume like other services, if there's some cloud involved, it should be on Chinese soil and accessible to China.
For EU harder to guess, but again the lock-in with "Private Cloud Computing" feels related.
speedgoose 5 hours ago
It could be because a digital signature could be use to track without consent.
dannyw 4 hours ago
Nah, it’s an optional feature, so by using it you provide express consent. GDPR gives users more data ownership; GDPR does not stop you from choosing to do what you want with your data.
It’s likely DMA — Apple would be required to provide APIs for signing for 3rd party apps too.
andrewmutz 14 hours ago
Can't I just point my camera at an AI generated image? And it will get the stamp of authenticity?
llukas 13 hours ago
Stamp only proves you did the photo and probably some metadata like when where etc.
It helps but doesn't solve credibility issue.
lokar 12 hours ago
what is it missing then?
intrasight 12 hours ago
The credibility comes from who took the photo. The next logical and easy step is for this metadata to flow to the user agent. I'll know that it was taken by a legit journalist photographer. And id not, I can have my user agent make it fuzzy or replaced with
a kitten photo.
Gigachad 11 hours ago
I think this is where we are headed. This feature seems useless on it's own since someone will eventually find a way to extract the key from the iphone and sign any image. But if they could make it so every iphone uses it's own key and the photos show "Taken by xyz" and it's linked to their icloud or identity somehow. That way images shared around will still be able to be linked to a source that you can choose to trust and the viewer can know it wasn't modified from what that person shot.
Then we might move to an age where photos which were not signed by someone will be treated as fake.
intrasight 10 hours ago
I don't think we'll treat them as fake but they would probably undergo more scrutiny - perhaps in a crowd-sourced manner that provides an overall score of probable legitimacy.
mikestorrent 9 hours ago
You may have forgotten that the world is driven by screenshots, and so a screenshot of a picture with the `(X) Verified by Apple to be Joe Schmoe` tacked on will be just as good as real verification for a lot of people.
What we need is almost something like the classic "press C+A+D to log in" or the idea of "above the browser pane"... something an image cannot show you unless it's legit. Perhaps a personal thumbprint icon that is different for each viewer, so you know its your device telling you that something is real and not just some mock fake thing?
teaearlgraycold 9 hours ago
Phones all have hardware security modules with keys stored inside. That will absolutely be in use for this new feature.
cavoirom 6 hours ago
You actually think the Secure Enclave is useless.
nonethewiser 8 hours ago
Right. All of your pictures will include identifying information. Same will happen for LLM generated text.
dabinat 13 hours ago
It would be great if they could use the LiDAR scanner to sign a depth map of the scene in front of the camera. It would show if you photographed a flat image.
w4der 13 hours ago
And what if you take a picture across a IR-filtered window?
apetresc 12 hours ago
Then you won’t be able to prove it was a genuine photograph? That sounds like the right failure mode.
koolala 12 hours ago
They could use the camera aperture to take a second photo and calculate blur.
bayindirh 12 hours ago
The sensor already uses phase detection autofocus. You can create a depth map out of it. iPhone X used its dual cameras and that phase data for depth maps.
mikeaskew4 12 hours ago
Pretty sure it does that already.
ks2048 12 hours ago
If that became popular, the AIs would learn how to generate a realistic depth map along with any generated image.
lokar 12 hours ago
How would that work? I thought the premise here is that you can fool the apple camera by taking a (very carefully aligned) picture of a still image (printed out).
A depth map from the apple camera (again, signed) would show that the entire image had the same distance from the camera.
ks2048 3 hours ago
You're right. I think my comment above doesn't make sense - it wouldn't help in this case.
Gigachad 11 hours ago
The photos are cryptographically signed in the apple image pipeline so it's not as simple as just AI generating something. That said, I can't see how this is any different to all the other times we have embedded crypto keys in consumer hardware where eventually someone finds a way to extract the key and the whole thing is busted open.
jaggederest 10 hours ago
Given the whole private cloud bit, I am assuming they keep the private keys server side and never let them out.
Gigachad 10 hours ago
That's a good point, You might still be able to trick the cloud to sign your photos, but that's something they could patch in updates without losing control of the key. They could have the server only sign photos taken on the latest ios version.
jaggederest 10 hours ago
And honestly you could have a similar antitampering oracle that was at least obscured, in terms of "we've detected tampering but won't tell you how or why", which is frustrating but I have to imagine that 99.9%+ of images are clean.
monocasa 8 hours ago
I think there's a chain of trust. The sensor signs raws, and the private cloud takes signed raws, does minimal processing so they're at least coherent, and re signs that output (maybe even including the original signed raw as well in the image file).
lxgr 2 hours ago
How would the server know that the request is coming from a real iPhone?
This is a pretty standard application of trusted computing and can be done entirely on the iPhone. A server would only possibly be needed for anonymization (while retaining key revocation capabilities if a key does end up leaking), but there are serverless ways to do even that (TPMs have supported these for a while now).
jaggederest 42 minutes ago
It wouldn't, but you could validate that a particular picture was created at a particular time, and had not changed, for example, especially with metadata that you may not want to share but that establishes certain parameters like gps coordinates. A lock, rather than an end-to-end pixel signature, which shows what was contemporaneous rather than exact provenance. If an event happened on day 0000-00-00 00:00:00am, but your photo was taken at some other time, it casts doubt.
I think a big part of validation for things like these are just "could it have been modified since Z event happened", because Z was not something people paid attention to before.
embedding-shape 11 hours ago
Even simpler, a 3D printed relief with an image "stamped" on it, now you effectively have a 3D image.
bayindirh 11 hours ago
…and the PDAF data will show how shallow it is.
embedding-shape 11 hours ago
... don't make it so shallow then. Perfectly possible in a consumer-friendly 3D printer for a face or even human body if you have lots of time for the prints.
dylan604 11 hours ago
but what are we really trying to solve here. you're suggesting a helluvalota work for what purpose?
ceejayoz 8 hours ago
You’re well on the way to 1:1 replicas at this point. Next you’ll need to match the thermal signature and the exact weather in the sky for the time at that location.
lxgr 2 hours ago
Then take and sign a one-second video and you’re adding a few orders of magnitude of complexity again.
golem14 an hour ago
Sounds like Rincewind's spell from the Octavo.
selcuka 11 hours ago
One can 3d-print the AI generated image and photograph that. /s
dwattttt 10 hours ago
The 'ol "analog hole". Never been able to patch that gap.
lxgr 2 hours ago
Yes, if your adversary can generate a high-fidelity 3D moving replica of a scene, they can deceive you that it’s real. But can they really?
FreJunofficial1 4 hours ago
That's a cool idea.
dymk 12 hours ago
It will look like you took a picture of a screen or print out
michaelt 11 hours ago
People have constructed video walls so high resolution they can film TV series in front of them and to an audience it's indistinguishable from a real set. It's extremely cost-effective for things like space fantasy that needs lots of exotic-looking backdrops, apparently.
It may not be in reach for you and I - but within reach of anyone with the budget to run a 'bot farm'
cedilla 10 hours ago
The high resolution video wall is quite simple. The hard part and why this has not been done earlier is that for filming, they had to synchronize the rendered background with the movement of the camera.
spartanatreyu 9 hours ago
Movement is solved by tracking the camera's position and projecting the background from there.
Proof of captured image with hardware-based-attestation can be increased by adding extra information besides the RGB channels, like depth mapping (which a projected screen wouldn't be able to fake), and eventually light field recording (plenoptic imaging, e.g. Lytro).
dymk 8 hours ago
If they’re spending millions on faking an image, okay fine. That’s clearly not the security model intended for this feature though.
InvertedRhodium 8 hours ago
How large and pixel dense does a display need to be for it to convincingly fill an image sensor?
I suspect it’s significantly less than millions.
dgently7 4 hours ago
also no, even in the high rez video walls its still possible to tell. maybe to an "audience" no but there are lots of fundamental flaws with video walls that make them not the same as filming it for real. all of those flaws show up in the final image and could be detected.
things like color rendering, sharpness, screen door/morie, motion blur, and yup even good ole depth queues in the lens system all show up as artifacts.
case in point, outside of a few specific niche cases like the mandalorian, that virtual production video wall thing is not actually being used all that much because of the amount of post shoot cleanup required to fix all those issues, it wasnt actually that much cheaper and its not really better either. especially when you factor in how hard it is to shoot that way.
michaelt 2 hours ago
> things like color rendering, sharpness, screen door/morie, motion blur, and yup even good ole depth queues in the lens system all show up as artifacts.
Pre-AI fake videos sidestep this sort of issue by lowering the video quality.
Add some motion blur, some camera shake, some poor lighting, the camera being slightly out of focus, and make the video 720p instead of 4k.
nonethewiser 8 hours ago
Yes.
thallium205 6 hours ago
I bet there exists data from the 3 cameras to represent some depth to the image.
bl4ckm0r3 2 hours ago
that's an authentic photo, not the subject/image, the photo is authentic.
whatever1 13 hours ago
I wish next year for videos too.
We really need it for journalism. Otherwise we will not know what is real and what fabricated with ai.
FireBeyond 13 hours ago
Canon's original high end digital models had this as a feature, that your images could be digitally signed in-camera based on raw sensor data. Primarily for law enforcement. Obviously a far broarder use case, now.
spacebanana7 13 hours ago
The weakness of this is that a person can take a picture of a high resolution screen or print.
We really need Apple to open up true depth APIs to make forgery non trivial.
awkwardleon 12 hours ago
Agree with the weakness, but the benefit of provenance is still there. You can't tell if the picture that person took is of an AI image, but there's some value in saying "I took this" and being able to prove it.
Gigachad 11 hours ago
I hope future social media presents this metadata so if someone claims a photo is from the BBC, it actually gets checked against the keys the BBC sign their photos with.
snypher 10 hours ago
How does this actually work though?
1) I see a photo online and doubt it's provenance
2) I contact the photographer and ask to see their cloud image (???!)
2a) I borrow someone's mac to download the image (.jpg?) and it can be verified on that?
apetresc 12 hours ago
I don’t know too much about image processing, but my intuition tells me that distinguishing a photo of a 3d scene from a photo of a photo of a 3d scene is a much easier engineering problem than distinguishing it from an AI-generated diffusion. So even just reducing the problem to the former is still a worthy accomplishment.
lern_too_spel 12 hours ago
Finally. Android phones have been shipping with C2PA since last year, so it's great that the final holdout has capitulated, though with its own set of nonstandard tools.
https://c2paviewer.com/articles/samsung-galaxy-s25-c2pa
https://security.googleblog.com/2025/09/pixel-android-truste...
nxc18 12 hours ago
The Android version is useless though, TBD if Apple can do better.
lern_too_spel 5 hours ago
Indeed, on top of Google's implementation being a bad joke, it sounds like the C2PA specifications in general are a massive fail so far. https://arxiv.org/html/2604.24890v1
On the other hand, ignoring standards altogether is the wrong way to go because the ecosystem after capture won't be there.
sheepybloke 12 hours ago
On the opposite side, this read to me like there was so much image processing going on in the background and off device that they felt like they needed to prove that there was a real image backing the creation, and that it was not all AI. It really begs the question of what the extent is of image processing.
Gigachad 11 hours ago
The iphone image pipeline is mostly just playing with exposure and color, things that we widely regard as fair game in editing. Where the line was crossed was magic eraser and reframe where the iphone is straight up making objects in the image.
whimsicalism 9 hours ago
there is definitely some generative pixel stuff in the iOS pipeline as i've noticed garbled deepdream-esque letters when zooming before
Gigachad 9 hours ago
That could be a result of a failed exposure stack. Phone sensors and lenses suck for light gathering so they have to take multiple photos and merge them together to create one that's less noisy. Occasionally you get artifacts where the merge failed.
It's still distinct from actual AI generation imo.
siva7 10 hours ago
A mobile phone.. an internet communicator.. a music player.. don't you get it?
well, steve, actually 18 years later it's a .. camera
Frost1x 10 hours ago
How will this work against rehosted images on all the platforms people actually share photos from? It’s a good feature but many popular services apply metadata stripping and basic image adjustment before resharing. That seems like the place where people would actually want to verify authenticity.
cavoirom 6 hours ago
It works for the author of the image who want to prove the authenticity, and the party that publishing the image who want to maintain the trust.
tclancy 9 hours ago
That smells like "show don't tell", but who knows.
Melatonic 6 hours ago
So does that mean only the main sensor can do this ?
bilekas 6 hours ago
That's more of a software feature..
ikr678 4 hours ago
Cynical take: A single photo to now consume up 50mb of cloud storage, adding to the demand for more data centers that supported the creation of this authenticity issue in the first place.
galkk 4 hours ago
lol, called it month ago
no_time 3 hours ago
Feels like the only ones who'd benefit from this are AI companies that are afraid of tainting their post 2023 datasets with their own slop.
On the other hand if this becomes mandated by law I can see it become treacherous for endusers.
lxgr 2 hours ago
It also sounds pretty useful for anyone involved in a lawsuit to be able to present photographic evidence again. I’m sure GenAI is already a big headache for forensics, and enforcing AI watermarks will clearly not be bulletproof.
Good4boothee an hour ago
Will it ever work until a TPM like module is directly integrated into camera sensor? Older attempts of Nikon and Canon got broken, same had happened with C2PA implementation for Android - if it gets anywhere close to CPU it is insecure.
Lockal an hour ago
> I love that it has a feature to prove images came from the real world
Congrats to Apple achieving nation-wide tracking, embedding some kind of yellow dots[1], but this time this time this is based on strong cryptography and non-removable, targeting people who don't use AI under the slogan "we are fighting AI fakes", but people still "love the feature".
knollimar an hour ago
Are the yellow dots not opt in?
scq 18 minutes ago
If you have a colour laser printer, not only are the tracking dots not opt in, but there is no way to opt out.
QuantumNomad_ an hour ago
> Users can now prove the authenticity of a photo taken on iPhone 18 Pro models with Apple Reference Image, powered by the new sensor in the Main camera that can sign every pixel it sees.
Will this also work with third-party camera apps like ProCam?
bluber84 41 minutes ago
This feature is not enabled in the eu
nateb2022 15 hours ago
I would love to see some "pro" features hit the Pro or Pro Max. Something I've wanted for a while is the ability to have more than 2 active eSIMs; I think a dual modem would be really cool, maybe with some features targeting users in poor cell coverage/ spotty service areas.
Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD, and power a multi monitor setup with your iPhone Pro. macOS would be sick. Or (waterproof) exposed PCIE lanes so 3rd parties can integrate an ecosystem of backpacks like how Pi Hats work.
Scoundreller 15 hours ago
> I think a dual modem would be really cool, maybe with some features targeting users in poor cell coverage/ spotty service areas.
Can already do iMessage over satellite. Most “data” is download and I predict some satellite service that sends basic broadcasts (traffic, news, Text-to-speech podcasts) squeezed into a few mbps by pointing your phone at the sky (or a small cabled antenna for around the clock use). Would love to go carrier-less.
cavoirom 14 hours ago
Apple Reference Image is the new "pro" feature.
KermitTheFrog 13 hours ago
*not so "pro" in EU and China
LoganDark 9 hours ago
Well it apparently is so "pro" that it got regulated out of existence.
wang_li 13 hours ago
>Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD,
My iphone 16 pro max can do 4K ProRes HDR or Log at 120 FPS when plugged into a SSD. If I had more builtin storage I could do it without the SSD. If you don't mind more dongling you can also have an external display along with the external SSD.
Aurornis 11 hours ago
> Or feature Thunderbolt rather than normie USB-C so you can record 4/8K ProRes to an SSD,
The old iPhone 17 Pro has USB 3.2 Gen 2, which is good for 10Gb/s.
You can already record 4K60 ProRes to an external SSD. This feature already existed for a year, so I assume you didn't actually need it?
> and power a multi monitor setup with your iPhone Pro. macOS would be sick.
I think you're looking for a MacBook Pro the size of an iPhone.
nomel 10 hours ago
The MacBook Neo runs an A18 Pro phone chip. It's appears to be all there and somewhat ready to give us something like DeX [1].
[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/app/samsung-dex
mrheosuper 7 hours ago
10Gbps is 12 times slower than the maximum bw of TB5.
You could argue most people wont need that speed, but most people don't need pro phone too.
999900000999 6 hours ago
Something else will drop the ball guaranteed.
Can you show me the workflow which uses this and has an iPhone as the bottleneck
mrheosuper 6 hours ago
Moving my videos from ip to my TB ssd ?
eigen 6 hours ago
are these videos larger than the iphone SSD or TB SSD DRAM buffer and will need to drop to NAND erase/write speed?
mrheosuper 6 hours ago
No, but i dont understand your point ?
dzhiurgis 11 hours ago
Images that sync to mac photos app instantly via wifi rather than half day via icloud.
LoganDark 4 hours ago
You can almost achieve this by setting a reminder to turn on "sync immediately" manually every single day (because Apple decided there should be no permanent or indefinite option, and went through the extra effort of making it timed simply for the sake of inconvenience).
I actually do this because it's the behavior I've wanted for years, and I care about it enough to go through the relentless annoyance.
doubtfuluser an hour ago
Sadly my 14 pro has a crack in the lower right screen, and the tele lense has some issue with fixing lens position / focus (? I hear some clickering and it doesn’t focus). Otherwise I would just stay another few years with it, now I’m going to upgrade - and yeah I’ll stay with Apple. I have some devices quite a few years old by them and still working flawlessly.
ksec 15 hours ago
I am actually quite excited on this iPhone 18 Pro. Seems to pack a a lot of exciting stuff. 2nm A20 Pro, C2. I wish they have N2 but I guess not. 2nd Generation Vapour Chamber. I thought I would have to wait another generation because Apple like to use new product features for two generation before moving on. And it seems this Vapour Chamber along with other heat desperation features are much better built. Much better Camera. And larger battery. With 60W charging that finally matches or closes to a lot of Android phone has been doing.
Never thought they would do it all within one update. In terms of hardware that is pretty much everything I wanted other than Silicon Battery.
The only thing that need radical change is iOS.
LeBit 13 hours ago
Heat desperation?
I don’t think Siri is sentient yet.
ivm 13 hours ago
> The only thing that need radical change is iOS.
Please, not again.
– Sincerely yours mobile developer
RetpolineDrama 12 hours ago
Introducing SwiftUI2: Every UI is a simple prompt, and all the underlying code is generated.
brokencode 10 hours ago
I mean, isn’t that how like 90% of new SwiftUI apps are created these days? Just telling an AI what you want? Apple already can’t keep up with the review.
JAlexoid 6 hours ago
If they can't keep up, that means that they're not using AI to do reviews
brokencode 5 hours ago
Knowing how stingy Apple is, they’re probably still trying to get the expense approved.
That’s partially why they’re in the mess they’re in with AI. The CFO wouldn’t let them buy enough GPUs to train their models.
They needed all that money for more important expenses, like share buybacks, instead.
ShinyLeftPad 12 hours ago
> The only thing that need radical change is iOS.
Personally iSO 26 is so unbelievably glitchy, it's only not embarrasing because you know others spent $$$ on the same thing so everyone pretends it's fine.
solarkraft 12 hours ago
27 is really a lot better, even on an iPhone 13.
Yet that’s still just repairing what they previously broke. I still can’t listen to music AND listen to a voice memo or a video clip.
josephg 11 hours ago
They seem to have ironed most of the problems now. You can disable liquid glass if you hate it, and as a result iOS 26 is nearly as good as the previous version. I’m running it on my iphone12. I hated it when it first came out. But it seems fine now.
netheril96 7 hours ago
Really? iOS Guided Access is bugged on the whole 26, and I have been encountering system freeze many times on 26, never before on any other versions.
ShinyLeftPad 7 hours ago
I don't know how you're using it. The most broken (so it needs to be restarted sometimes) is Podcasts, but Music, Safari, Settings etc have glaring visual glitches too.
josephg 6 hours ago
Well, it might help that on day 1, I turned off the liquid glass effects in accessibility settings. At first there were several small layout / UI bugs that came from turning liquid glass off. But it seems fine now.
I don't use the apple podcasts or music apps. (Overcast and Spotify for me). I haven't run into any serious problems.
ShinyLeftPad 6 hours ago
I'm not sure if you're an iphone user or did you root your iphone?
It's NOT possible to turn LG off in iOS 26. It is possible to reduce transparency and motion (i tried with and without enabling those and it's broken anyway).
jq-r 12 hours ago
I don’t understand why the Max version doesn’t have C2. Maybe supply constraints but I doubt it.
ralph84 3 hours ago
It could be as simple as Apple committed to a certain volume with Qualcomm before they were certain they could get mmWave working so they have to keep using Qualcomm modems somewhere while they burn down the commitment.
theplumber 12 hours ago
Besides a better camera what all this along with the past generations have so exciting ? I just fail to see a reason to upgrade. Maybe I am getting old?
millipede 13 hours ago
The things we need to know most, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, are unfortunately missing from the release. Their absence doesn't bode well.
runjake 13 hours ago
Based on supply chain leaks, it's pretty safe to assume 12 GB memory with up to 100GB/sec memory bandwidth at best.
The A19 Pro had 12 GB and was around 77GB/sec memory bandwidth for reference. If I was a betting man, I'd say the memory bandwidth on the A20 Pro is the same.
quentindanjou 13 hours ago
If I didn't dream it, I think their presentation said something like 50% increase so you should be quite right probably around ~110GB/sec
carstn 13 hours ago
Rumors suggested a wider memory bus on A20 Pro.
SirMaster 13 hours ago
But they said the memory bandwidth was double the previous generation.
halJordan 12 hours ago
And here we are back to the crux. Sure would be nice if the released material was verifiable instead of "trust me shitstick"
josephg 11 hours ago
Why? What do you do on your phone that makes you care about memory bandwidth?
bel8 11 hours ago
in 2026? LLM performance, for one.
mrheosuper 7 hours ago
everything. Faster memory, fast processing, making everything smoother, and you can idle faster.
dgellow 13 hours ago
What do you do with your phone that requires you to know the memory details? Genuine question, I have absolutely no idea how much memory my iPad or phone have and don’t see why I would need to know
WarmWash 13 hours ago
Running not-particularly-useful local models.
o_m 13 hours ago
I only care about it because I'm waiting for a MacBook Neo with more than 8gb of memory.
wang_li 13 hours ago
I'm waiting for a software release for my iPhone 16 Pro Max that will let me plug in a dock that has an attached SSD, keyboard, mouse, and display, and an option to pop up on my phone to reboot into MacOS.
Also, if they make a neo 2 from the A19 with 12 GB that'd be cool.
selectodude 12 hours ago
I’m pretty sure the efficiency cores in the A20 Pro have more juice than the performance cores in my M1 Pro laptop.
josephg 11 hours ago
You’ll be waiting awhile. iPads have had desktop M-series CPUs for ages now, and you still can’t run macOS on an iPad.
It’s just a software restriction. I’m sure they have macOS running on iPhones and iPads internally, probably both through a VM and natively. But it’s very Apple to block this use case.
josephg 12 hours ago
With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane. We should get software working well on those devices, just like it did a decade or two ago.
Small, memory efficient programs run better everywhere. It feels like theft to make consumers pay for our inefficient software. Electron / react on the desktop is such a rort.
StilesCrisis 8 hours ago
I wonder how much we could reclaim just by going back to 32-bit pointers. If we're going back to 4GB it should be fine, right?
josephg 7 hours ago
Yes and no. If I recall, 32 bit windows has a fixed allocation of 3gb for userland and 1gb for the kernel’s memory space. I think 32bit only really works well for memory sizes smaller than 4gb. It might not be worth it, given a lot of OSes are in the process of deprecating 32bit support.
nonethewiser 8 hours ago
>With the price of ram going up by 5x, I want to see our industry move in the opposite direction. Computers for regular people should go back to 4gb or even 2gb of ram, just to keep the prices sane.
Sure. Right along with Intel Core 2 Duo and Windows Vista.
dgellow 2 hours ago
Modern CPUs and memory, just less ram
eagerpace 12 hours ago
Because I am buying a phone to use for the next 3 years and want to buy it based on the most important property of compute devices right now. I couldn't care less about the camera and the 13 random metrics that all look the same as every other camera announcement. I will happily take 96GB of RAM in my phone (and I know what that means) and would gladly allow you to make it 1.2mm thicker in the process.
apetresc 12 hours ago
What on earth would you do with an iOS device that has 96GB of RAM? You realize the last generation (i.e, the most powerful consumer phone in the world today) had 12 GB of RAM? You feel the need for eight times that amount?
lokar 12 hours ago
Number go up, I guess? A lot of people derive great satisfaction from ever larger (or sometimes smaller) number. But, uh, 8X is probably too much, need to spread that out over a few generations.
cortesoft 11 hours ago
They obviously want to run AI models on their phone.
HDBaseT 10 hours ago
In theory it sounds alright, although in reality, the heat and power consumption make this less than ideal.
I am not sure single digit tk/s on weak model like ChatGPT OSS 20b @ Q3_K_M is going to be worthwhile.
Not to mention this has to be <0.01% of users who "want" to do this. The iPhone tooling would make it hard to even configure and spin up a local LLM.
apetresc 9 hours ago
Very obviously you get a Mac Studio for that, not a phone. (Oh, the 96GB Studio is almost $6000, you counter? Imagine how much it would cost in a phone form factor).
You can't possibly expect Apple to take that market segment seriously.
LoganDark 8 hours ago
> the most powerful consumer phone in the world today
According to what? (I don't disagree, just curious)
dgellow 12 hours ago
You want a 96GB RAM phone and only plan to keep it 3 years? I cannot fathom the way some of you live. I have an iPhone SE from 2022 that I don’t expect to get rid of before at least 2-3 more years, meaning it would have been in use for 6-7y at minimum. And it’s perfectly comfortable to use, I’m not forcing myself in any way to keep it longer. And you’re talking about wanting a ridiculously expensive phone and only have it for 3 years? That sounds so wasteful and unnecessary
halJordan 12 hours ago
People sued apple for selling a device with no mention of ram and then apple released the next gen saying "this has more ram, you need to upgrade to it to use the features we advertised for last gen."
How about avoiding that scenario again? Is that a good enough reason? Being a diligent, informed consumer?
josephg 12 hours ago
I couldn’t agree more. I’m typing this on an iPhone 12, bought new 6 years ago. My phone still feels snappy. And it gets me through a whole day with 60%+ battery remaining. The only real complaint I have is that I only have the 64gb model. I need to delete things every time a software update comes out because of how bloated modern software has become. But the hardware is fantastic.
I have no idea how much ram my phone has. So long as apps run well, why would I care?
selcuka 11 hours ago
You're missing the important bit in the GP comment:
> the most important property of compute devices right now
Memory didn't matter when iPhone 12 was released, but these days it determines which local LLMs you can run on device. That's the point of that comment.
unlikelytomato 9 hours ago
It's about multitasking. RAM is the upgrade trigger for me. I'm so exhausted by developer introduced bloat in software such that almost every app fully reloads when switching. Devs ruin multitasking every few years until another RAM upgrade.
eagerpace 11 hours ago
I’m being hyperbolic. Sharing the amount of RAM seems table stakes with the current demand and failing to disclose it seems like the answer wouldn’t be positive.
hombre_fatal 12 hours ago
To know what you're getting. No further reasons needed.
swader999 10 hours ago
Ok Bill.
renecito 9 hours ago
sell another phone with "more than iPhone" and claim is better because "more X" right ?
bmandale 8 hours ago
People who actually care about their money often like to compare competing products and decide which one provides them the best value.
curiousgal 7 hours ago
> best value
> iPhone
Pick one.
hk__2 25 minutes ago
The amount of RAM doesn’t tell you anything about "the best value". Bad software with a large amount of RAM provides less value than highly-optimized one with a lower amount of RAM, for example.
This was the whole advantage of the iPhone at the beginning: not a lot of RAM (meaning less energy needed) but a highly-optimized OS that works well even with that constrained environment.
stingraycharles 4 hours ago
I want to know how it compared to what I currently have.
ErneX 11 hours ago
12GB of ram and double the memory the bandwidth over the previous model.
reaperducer 11 hours ago
The things we need to know most, RAM and Memory Bandwidth, are unfortunately missing from the release. Their absence doesn't bode well.
Since 1984, Apple has targeted regular people, not spec nerds. You're not the market.
robocat 10 hours ago
Regular people optimise for silly numbers too.
Threadcount, Watts, cubic inches: different products use different misleading measures.
fiatpandas 6 hours ago
Still on a 12 Pro Max, which I bought near the original launch. It is in need of its first replacement battery. I’m very curious to see how much snappier it feels with this next iOS release which is focused a bunch on performance; in addition to a new battery, since I believe my iOS is throttling performance given the health.
sleight42 6 hours ago
13 Pro here. Just upgraded my battery. May go another year or two at this rate.
Always said that I didn't see a reason to upgrade once I had 5G UW
fiatpandas 6 hours ago
Yeah I tend to squeeze the life out of my Apple purchases. iPhone 4s -> 7 -> 12 Pro Max. And still on a 2017 MBP at home, running Sequoia via Open Core Patcher.
mmahemoff 6 hours ago
I still use a 13 Pro Max for travel. Incredible longevity. The only downside is it requires a battery pack to last a full day but those are slim and compact now. I intend to replace the battery soon since it still has 2-3 years left as a backup.
It will probably keep most of its value too, if hardware price inflation continues.
sevenseacat 5 hours ago
I still have my 11. The battery is garbage on it, but everything is still totally fine. Haven't upgraded to iOS 26 though...
hutattedonmyarm 2 hours ago
Still using my 12 Pro Max as well. Battery is still okay-ish on mine. Not good, but I don't have to actively worry about it. Will be looking forward to all the fancy new features when I replace it in 3-4 years
napolux an hour ago
Changed my 14 PRO battery last week. See you @ iPhone 22
afavour 15 hours ago
That’s certainly an iPhone, alright.
Apple basically need to release a new model every year to fit the phone upgrade cycle so I suppose it’s not that surprising to see one with so few compelling features. Maybe next year.
nobleach 15 hours ago
> the most advanced camera in an iPhone
I mean, I can't remember the last time they DIDN'T say that. Variable aperture is kinda cool I guess. 256Gigs of storage basically means everyone's going to have to upgrade their iCloud storage monthly spend just to back this thing up. I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.
otherjason 15 hours ago
Apple events are full of these meaningless statements, which always drive me crazy. Of course it's the "best iPhone Apple has ever made." If it wasn't, then wouldn't I be better off buying an older model?
nobleach 14 hours ago
I haven't been this excited since Dodge released their new Caravan... or Ubuntu released their new orange and purple UI...
paxys 14 hours ago
Just once I want the CEO to go up on stage and say “this year’s model isn’t all that great tbh”.
Den_VR 13 hours ago
That’s the open for an actually amazing year.
insaneirish 13 hours ago
> I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.
This is an interesting choice. Photos from my phone would literally be the last thing I ever turned off backup for.
To each their own...
brewdad 12 hours ago
Agreed. The photo backup is so seamless. I’ve been documenting my electronics and other possessions for insurance purposes and in anticipation of a move. It’s been so easy to go around the house taking photos of serial numbers and such with the better camera on my phone. Then I grab my iPad and update the spreadsheet. Nothing needed to happen on my end, the photos are just there for my iPad to access and as later proof if I ever need it.
nobleach 12 hours ago
Oh I back them up to Immich self-hosted. I just stopped paying Apple.
insaneirish 6 hours ago
> Oh I back them up to Immich self-hosted. I just stopped paying Apple.
Which means this original comment is somewhat disingenuous: "256Gigs of storage basically means everyone's going to have to upgrade their iCloud storage monthly spend just to back this thing up."
Clearly there is another option (as evidenced by your own behavior). But let's not pretend that option is free, either.
WarmWash 13 hours ago
Camera quality actually topped out a decade ago or so, and now it's become all post-processing trends that define "best".
Not unlike the "Best jacket of the season" being the one that is most fashionable as opposed to the most functional.
luqtas 13 hours ago
soon we'll have a like amount predictor connected with your personal assistant talking with your social media
kingkongjaffa 13 hours ago
You say that, but I've bought the non-pro iphones the last few generations (13, 15 currently) and consistently wanted a better camera, so this upgrade cycle I'll probably shell out for the 18 pro.
Gigachad 11 hours ago
This is not even close to true. I took a bunch of photos side by side with the iphone 13 pro and the 17 pro. The 17 pro was unmistakably much better, particularly on the telephoto, it wasn't even close. There was a very clear improvement in detail and sharpness, and not in a crunchy post processing way, the sensor is simply larger and higher resolution.
Now I think all the iphone cameras still suck compared to an actual camera, but the improvement over the last 10 years has been dramatic.
FireBeyond 13 hours ago
And it's not even that they said that, I get marketing spiel but one the actual phrases was, emphasis his, not mine:
"MASSIVE improvements in Camera". Where? Evolution, refinement, sure. Massive? Hm.
drop_star 11 hours ago
>I've stopped sending my camera roll to iCloud just to save on space.
how do you backup your photos when the phone gets full. I dont have a mac and the process is excruciating. Also the formats get messed up so some photos become unusable. I stopped taking 'live' photos because of this.
Lucasoato 11 hours ago
There’s this MacOS native application called Image Capture, use it to backup 100GB of photos. I then partitioned the photo by year and 7zipped them with encryption.
dylan604 10 hours ago
You missed the salient details: "I dont have a mac"
Everything you stated to is useless to the person you replied.
edgarvaldes 9 hours ago
Maybe he interpreted the "how do you backup" as a particular question directed to him, not a general one.
intrasight 8 hours ago
Is handled by Synology DS File app. Is what I've done for 6 years. I don't send photos to iCloud.
ValentineC 6 hours ago
Not the parent, but Google Photos has been decent as a secondary backup. They even backup Live Photos now.
The two formats I've found that they don't back up accurately are rotated photos (if one's a stickler for "originals") and cropped screenshots (JPEG instead of PNG). Possibly the sidecar files for edits too.
sampullman 4 hours ago
Rotation data isn't included in the file, or it just doesn't display with the correct orientation?
Sometimes Google photos shows the wrong orientation for my pixel photos/videos but it's just a display issue.
nicbou 3 hours ago
USB-C and the 5x lens made me switch to iOS.
Likewise the 6th gen iPad Mini is what I was waiting for to get a tablet to sketch.
Sometimes a device hits just right.
MattDamonSpace 14 hours ago
Incremental changes year/year to a mature product line means if you skip a couple years you get a BIG upgrade
sleight42 6 hours ago
You can always buy the $2000 edition. Or give Apple the finger. I'm leaning toward the latter.
sevenseacat 5 hours ago
That's the iPhone 18, over here
meyum33 an hour ago
The non-max 18 Pro getting 17 Pro Max battery is quite a great leap, no? This is actually the most surprising announcement today, given how Duo was anticipated.
vivzkestrel 4 hours ago
- tired of fitting all the 7 inch phones
- can I get a 5 inch phone please?
ngruhn 4 hours ago
refurbished 13 mini for me
kimseungyong 9 hours ago
I was waiting for the standard iPhone, so it’s a shame it’s coming out next year.
Unless you’re using photos or videos like an expert, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to go for a heavy Pro anymore.
Since last year’s promotional display came equipped with the standard model, I just can’t find it appealing.
Ah, of course, since it has AI features, we’ll have to see how much the RAM difference matters, but
Could it be that Apple is going to put so little RAM in the standard model that they can’t really use AI well?
I hope you won’t go that far.
fizwidget 4 hours ago
I don’t think you need to be taking “expert” photos to want some optical zoom.
I wish they’d put a zoom lens instead of a wide angle on the standard iPhone, but alas, you need a Pro for that.
bilekas 6 hours ago
I'm finding it really hard to justify buying a new iPhone. They're so expensive these days for marginal improvements that seems if you're not an avid photo taker/media maker you don't get much back from.
zarzavat 4 hours ago
The marginal improvements add up over time. Most people upgrade every few years, amortized over a 3 year upgrade cycle it's not really that expensive.
Marsymars 4 hours ago
TBH I don't think I've ever bought a new phone because there was something new and fancy that I could justify. Every phone I've bought has been because my previous phone stopped receiving software updates, or in the case of my Pixel 6a, had a hooped battery.
hobo123 4 hours ago
Then don't. Isn't the whole point of long support cycles that you can keep using your phone for 5 years +, if it serves you well? (typing this from an S22)
otterley 3 hours ago
It makes a lot more sense to purchase one if you consider their residual value when you sell it to upgrade later. A typical Android phone depreciates much more quickly than an iPhone. My three-year-old iPhone 15 Pro is still worth $500 or more on the open market--about half of what I spent. That's only $166/year.
The downside is that you need more money up front to purchase it.
Merad 15 hours ago
> eSIM-only models deliver up to 36 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro and up to 45 hours of video playback on iPhone 18 Pro Max.
That might convince me to upgrade. Not because I care about watching video for two days straight, but hopefully it means the battery is large enough that it'll last 5+ years before battery degradation becomes annoying.
rafaelmn 15 hours ago
Meh I just replaced a battery in my 14 pro (and the charging port) for ~200 EUR. I didn't want to upgrade yet and I would not even be considering upgrading if the device had USB-C
eastbound 15 hours ago
Don't. Large iPhones are the deadweight of a ball and chain, and fits in no pockets. Next one will be the SE, and even if I buy an external battery, it's still lighter than the ingot Pro Max. Also you can buy one every 1.5 years.
Insanity 15 hours ago
I'm on the iPhone 13 pro max since launch and my phone comfortable gets through an entire day of usage. (Given my usage is pretty light). If the battery fubars in one of the next years I wouldn't be upset, 5+ years of battery life is enough.
But I also don't see it failing me any time soon on battery. I think local AI models in a future iPhone could be an actual reason to upgrade.
jmuguy 15 hours ago
I have a 12 Pro Max purchased at release, battery is now at 83% capacity. Still lasts all day and then some, rarely think how much I've got left on a charge.
Scoundreller 15 hours ago
I set up a shortcut to put me into low-battery mode once I hit 95%. Works a treat.
Merad 13 hours ago
My three year old 15 Pro is already down to 85% capacity.
LUmBULtERA 13 hours ago
My 15 pro bought on release is at 91% and 607 cycles, for more reference.
arealaccount 7 hours ago
I have the same phone, also lasts about a day and a half.
How do you see the capacity?
JK-Swizzle 14 hours ago
I doubt any phone battery is lasting 5+ years. But I can say modern iPhones are pretty easy to swap the battery on. They designed it so the back plate gets removed to open the phone rather than the screen. No more risk of cracking the display.
moduspol 14 hours ago
Oh that's nice. I'd always see guides talking about glue with the screen and kinda spooked me out of it.
stevenwoo 13 hours ago
I took an iPhone SE generation three to Apple Store to replace battery and they broke the NFC functionality in a way that passed their simple diagnostic tool but failed to work in the real world. I had to go back and reset the phone and upgrade my IOS so they could troubleshoot it (the phone menu for setting appointments does not allow you to pick repair broke NFC funny enough) and they were nice enough to give me a new iPhone SE to replace we proved it was broken. But that was kind of worrisome and put me off any kind of Apple self repair for something they still make.
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
I think anything after the 16 regular or 17 pro becomes easy to repair. I feel you though, my first battery swap turned into a screen swap too.
The SE versions have a history of board level issues so I have been afraid to touch any of them.
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
With reason. That glue is a nightmare to deal with. I would not advise anyone start with iPhone repair.
I damaged my first iPhone repair even after multiple years of active hardware modification on other consumer devices. The older models really only go smooth if you have the Apple tools. A nice $149 of tool rental to swap the $50 part at home, rather than paying the $199 to get Apple to swap it for you. Odd how that math works out.
tonyedgecombe 13 hours ago
>I doubt any phone battery is lasting 5+ years.
Just coming up to five years on mine and it is still at 87% capacity.
lotsofpulp 13 hours ago
I have an iphone 13mini at 5 years and 81% capacity.
chrisweekly 12 hours ago
My 13pro is at 84% capacity, but in the last month or two it seems to lose charge much more rapidly than it used to. Probably the only reason I'll consider an upgrade.
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
Very jealous over here. I had a 12 mini whose battery dropped off a cliff just in time for the mini line to get discontinued.
Big phones are overrated.
Exoristos 11 hours ago
You didn't replace the battery[0]?
usefulcat 12 hours ago
iPhone 11 coming up on 7 years old in December, still at ~85% capacity.
Really it mostly depends on how heavily you use it, and maybe to a lesser extent charging habits (charging slowly, not charging to 100%, etc).
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
I hear you, but the convenience of 30W charging is very hard to give up. The only downside is it damages the battery, which makes it harder to give up, which damages the battery more.
blitzar 2 hours ago
the convenience of the old usb charging brick that has been plugged in under my bed for 15 years is very hard to give up.
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
That is genuinely shocking to hear. You have to be like 3+ sd above the mean. Do you know how many charge cycles you have? I recall that most batteries need replacing after 300-500 cycles.
ValentineC 12 hours ago
My iPhone 14 Pro is almost 4 years old and at 65% capacity. I don't know how everyone else is (not) using their phones.
JK-Swizzle 12 hours ago
I think you are the average case.
I follow the estimate that lipos lose 2-4% capacity per year without any use beyond recharging for safety. If the battery sees daily use that number gets a lot worse.
My guess is everyone else is the perfect mix of hardly any use and winning the battery lottery.
Lucasoato 11 hours ago
I’ve got a 14 Pro Max, used it extensively for four years and got mine at 81%.
monxer 13 hours ago
The maximum capacity of my iPhone 17 pro is still at 100% after 192 charges, that's after 1 year of usage. The extra battery life does reduce the amount of charges I have to do so that helps with the battery life.
I'm not sure where the capacity will end up after 5 years, but I think my iPhone 14 pro was at less than 95% at this point. Apple refused to replace just the battery on that one because of a small crack in the screen.
obruchez an hour ago
My iPhone 13 Pro will be 5 years old next month. Battery capacity at 82%. Does that count as lasting 5+ years?
aeroscissorz1 an hour ago
I personally prefer 17 pro for better value for money.
jtrn 3 hours ago
I’ve never been more baffled by an Apple event in my life.... We in Norway are part of the first batch of the rollout for the new AI/language feature?!??!?! Something’s fishy. Somethings up!
iw2rmb 2 hours ago
I've never seen such a boring landing page from Apple.
HaZeust 2 hours ago
Because they shared the Newsroom URL, instead of the Apple product page:
epistasis 15 hours ago
I really don't care at all about phone models, I just want software to launch quickly.
Waiting 15 seconds for a simple app is just infuriating in this day and age. This is mostly on crappy app developers, but a lot of that falls on Apple for not having a rating system that encourages basic good app behavior.
Every bad app that I encounter, which sends advertising notifications, takes a long time to launch, etc. is dominated by 5 star reviews, somehow. The whole ecosystem feels broken.
(And I'm also really offended by how ugly, unpolished, and broken the Tahoe visual style is on iPhone. The whole thing feels like a buggy beta, something completely unworthy of Apple of the past. That it's still not fixed is an indication of the Apple of the future, unfortunately...)
throw1234567891 14 hours ago
Maybe you need a new phone. Or a faster internet connection?
epistasis 14 hours ago
No I need better phone app developers. The fastest phone has the same issues. New phones are just as sluggish. And, it's a phone, there's not going to be fast networks everywhere, and a whole generation of poor developers was raised to believe that the network was always present and always fast.
And on the iOS side, Tahoe inserts all sorts of overdone, ridiculous animations that slow down phone interaction, but delaying presentation of
crtified 13 hours ago
We are up to the iphone 18 now. The iphone is said to be about 50% of Apple's revenue since 2012. Regardless of app developer quality, it is quite literally Apple's now-well-honed job to ensure that enough people want to buy next year's model, by various types of forced obsolescence. Indirectly, this means that the durably snappy and non-sluggish experience you're forever wanting can never actually happen. 'Forever wanting it' is an essential part of the business design here!
In this system. Of 'smartphones', where a small handful of corporate masters - who also happen to (now!) be a big share of the world's largest and most profitable corporations - now own over half of the computing world that we love, following their whirlwind 20-year takeover of it.
"No I need better phone app developers." - Hmmm. Commiserations. The trend of developer quality (and/or it's inverse - e.g. system complexity and overheads) has been fairly constant since the term 'developer' became mainstream parlance, and you won't need me to point out what effect AI coding agents have had upon the doorway-to-entry.
devilsdata 13 hours ago
Not that you aren't correct, but Tahoe is a MacOS release, not iOS. I assume you mean iOS 18 (the version before iOS 26)?
MYEUHD 12 hours ago
Tahoe is macOS 26. The corresponding iOS version is iOS 26
iOS 18 corresponds to macOS 15 (Sequoia)
hobo123 4 hours ago
Indeed, on modern laptops and phones every UI interaction should be instant (check out BeOS in 1995 for comparison). For background stuff, add some progress indicator.
Can't believe the crap OSes and frameworks add these days in terms of performance cost (and sadly, Apple doesn't exactly shine in that regard)
asdff 10 hours ago
The bigger question is what are these apps doing that they aren't doing 10 years ago that they now need all this extra compute for to serve the same basic functionality? It always amazes me how stuff like instagram just tanks my battery life. It is instagram its basically wgetting image urls same as its always done but it is taking over system resources for reasons...
JK-Swizzle 13 hours ago
I just tested a number of apps on my 15pm connected to WiFi and could not find anything that took longer than 5 seconds. That includes some small developers and bad developers.
Not quite sure where you are seeing this. Maybe games?
asdff 10 hours ago
I try and pick apps based on package size the rare time I look for some app. There are still apps out there made like they were 10 years ago (that probably haven't been updated in 10 years) where the package size is sub 10mb, sometimes sub 1mb. You get an app like that it is performant and will fly on any iphone really, and barely impact battery life in all likelihood.
fhub 6 hours ago
Package size has very low correlation to launch time. The binary and assets are separate. Additionally some slow app launches are simply waiting for a network request or chain before the view controller renders.
Marsymars 4 hours ago
In theory, sure, but in practice devs who care about package size correlate to those who care about launch times.
asdff 9 minutes ago
Situational. But often these apps are doing something just using that standard ios ux library from the really old days, and they open almost instantly as a result as it was designed to work on an iphone 3gs.
VCFundedGenYer 7 hours ago
Holding onto my 14 for as long as possible as it is safe from the absolute nonsense AI features.
at1as 15 hours ago
I have no idea which iPhone version I have anymore. It doesn't feel as though it's missing anything, though.But I'd upgrade immediately if the new models truly offered better AI experience.
Forgive my skepticism that Apple will get it right. Even the lauded latest version of Siri is far worse than the labs' offerings or Android at voice dictation (I now have to fix 1 word per sentence instead of 4, previously)
paul7986 15 hours ago
Indeed been using the new Siri since June and it fails a ton in comparison to chatGPT voice!
Using chatGPT voice i can see Open AI's push for pushing us to a new Internet voice paradigm 1st with screens/visuals secondary & complimentary to possibly none at all. It would be much safer especially when driving to get super intelligent human like directions where voice says drive to the mcdonalds on dorset you go to all the time and across the street is the new 7 Brew coffee shop.
jjice 15 hours ago
Agreed on iPhone versions not feeling significant. I personally consider it a good thing. I'll keep my phone for as long as possible and not feel the need to upgrade.
I personally don't care if Siri is the worst LLM of the big players, as long as it can answer my basic questions and search my texts, I'm happy. I don't need "frontier intelligence" for that kind of stuff.
As for dictation, they say the new dictation is much better, requiring an iPhone 17. Unfortunately, I won't get to find out if that's true for another five or so years, but I'm hopeful for a better dictation on device, because you're right.
kenjackson 15 hours ago
I update my phone now when the battery requires two full charges to 100% to last throughout the day. But there's no feature I'm looking for. My current phone is a 13 -- so I guess it lasted five years, which seems crazy long for it to be perfectly fine from a functionality perspective.
newman314 15 hours ago
I went from a 13 Pro to 17 Pro and the battery life has been great.
littlexsparkee 12 hours ago
I used my iPhone 8 for exactly 5 years before the battery went to hell. Been on iPhone 14 for 3 years, 9 months and see no reason to upgrade.
petesergeant 15 hours ago
I'm on a 12. Paid really not very much to get the battery replaced recently, and I wished I'd done it sooner. There's at least another year left in this phone now if I want it.
at1as 15 hours ago
I would probably still have my iPhone 12 mini if not for what happened to its battery. Loved that form factor, but the battery went from bad to worse in just a couple of years.
Hopefully these models have a longer lifespan before the battery life forces a replacement. If they truly offer 36 hours, there's more runway before they hit the < 18 hours point at which many people need a refresh
mrexroad 6 hours ago
I’ve been holding on to my 12 mini for a bit too long probably. I loved the thing before iOS 26, but sadly since then, even basic tasks cause it to overheat and just hang for several minutes until it cools off. The battery is a joke of course, but I was fine with that until the overheating. I’ve swapped it 2x over the years for a new unit, but shit software, shift web, and shit cell data coverage have made it nearly unusable.
I’ll finally, albeit reluctantly, upgrade this year. I really liked the mini form factor.
ocdtrekkie 13 hours ago
Same, I went from a base model iPhone 11 to a base model iPhone 16. Assuming the trend line holds up, I'm in for an iPhone 21 next!
osiriskang 8 hours ago
Almost the same as what I did, 11->16 Pro, and really only because I wanted a nicer camera. 128Gb has been more than enough for what I need. Don't have a reason to upgrade, battery still gets me through 2 days without a charge, and with Kino the times I want to have nicer-than-stock video I can get it.
eastbound 15 hours ago
— "Start my chronometer"
— "There is no contact named 'Chronometer'"
Maybe if we mock the iPhone enough, they'll stop autocorrecting words with other words that are on the opposite side of the keyboard. Or mistype letters with the letters just next to them.
iPhone is laughing stock. A neverending comedy of "There is no track named 'Call Mom' in your Apple Music library."
dayvid 15 hours ago
I upgraded from a 13 to a 17 pro. Barely notice a different, my old phone was just dying
js2 15 hours ago
The 13 is the last generation of the mini and I still have mine. Good to know I'm not missing anything. Battery capacity isn't even below 80% so I can't replace it under Applecare yet.
hakunin 15 hours ago
I got a battery replacement instead, and still use 13 pro, works like new.
bayganyo 13 hours ago
13 to 17 pro is a huge leap in performance, battery life, and camera features.
hdgvhicv 15 hours ago
This is the problem for Apple. Expect shorter lifetime for security updates in the next few years. It’s why they’re pushing the “lease to own”, because people aren’t upgrading every year, or two, or even three any more.
dylan604 15 hours ago
That's kind of like saying the 2026 Corolla isn't really much different than the 2025. People don't expect to upgrade annually. I'm using an iPhone 15, and upgraded to that from a 6S+. The 15 was a night and day difference. Most people are financing their device with their service plan which is 2-3 contract.
the_sleaze_ 13 hours ago
The photos I get on my iPhone are worse with every generation. Can anyone tell me if the photos are any good on these new ones? The hardware is fine I'm sure it's the post processing that destroys the image.
alistairSH 12 hours ago
Have you tried using a 3rd party photo app (like Halide)?
ricardobeat 12 hours ago
The 16 was a significant downgrade in quality due to over-processing. The hardware is actually improving, you just unfortunately need to use a third-party app to get access to the raw photos.
maxglute 11 hours ago
That is a... very underwhelming strap design. Wish Apple would do something interesting with accessories like eink backscreen. It's just been so mid.
b8 3 hours ago
Samsung phones still have better cameras. Nothing that special over the Pixel 10.
gcanyon 9 hours ago
We need Apple Reference Video and Audio.
rajay99 12 hours ago
$1199 for a variable aperture camera + 12gb of ram. Why not add stylus support?
Wait, that is gated to the $1999 duo device, with untested reliability.
supratims 12 hours ago
I think I am going to continue with my 17 pro max for another year. I usually upgrade every year, but not this time.
josephg 11 hours ago
I haven’t upgraded since 2020 and I still don’t have a good reason to. My iPhone 12 still runs great. I use a real camera for photography. Other than the cameras, what has meaningfully improved over the last 6 years?
muppetman 11 hours ago
Yea I just swapped my jogging/beach iPhone from an Xr to an iPhone 12 and wow, it's so much better than the Xr and pretty much as good as my "proper" phone, an 17Pro. It's got 4G RAM instead of 12G but it performs almost as well. Xr->12 is a huge leap in performance and I noticed it straight away. But the 12 against the 17 is much harder to see the difference. Less redraw of icons on the main screen is the primary thing I've noticed.
mrheosuper 7 hours ago
The only noticeable thing is faster screen, the 17 has 120hz screen.
blitzar 2 hours ago
my eyes are an older model
publlus_enigma 9 hours ago
I wonder how this works in tandem with the Computational Image Pipeline?
From Apple: "Apple Reference Image provides users with an unalterable reference photo, visually confirming what the sensor saw at the moment of capture."
The pixels that arrive in the final image have already been significantly altered from what the sensor saw: demosaicing, noise reduction, Deep Fusion, artificial bokeh, etc. Is the signature anchored to raw sensor readout (making the reference a de-mosaiced digital negative, with all CIP processing deliberately left outside the trust boundary), or to the CIP's emitted image (in which case what does 'unalterable' actually protect against)? If it is the latter, then Apple are essentially saying some forms of computational (and ML) manipulation are acceptable in a signed capture, so long as it is their manipulation.